Scientists from Harvard just successfully inserted a GIF into a bacteria

If that doesn't blow your mind we don't know what will

If you’re confused about what sort of word play we’ve used in the headline – we haven’t. As bizarre as it may sound, a group of genius scientists at Harvard have successfully ‘inserted’ a GIF (yes, the ones you use regularly in your memes) into a freaking bacteria – if the reputed science journal Nature is to be believed that is. As part of a recent research, the results of which the scientists published in Nature, they used a GIF of a ‘Moving Horse’ (Again, we’re not making any of this up) and embedded it into a live E. Coli bacteria.

If you’ve already had a good laugh about how you think scientists these days have too much time on their hands – you should know that this experiment was actually a lot more than just a parlour trick. To break it down quite simply, so that mortals like us who are as far from Harvard as the Moon is to the Earth can understand – the experiment is a demonstration of a new technology known as CRISPR, which enables DNA manipulation to a whole new level and even complex data storage in DNA. If even that explanation sent your head spinning, maybe you need to take a closer look at yourself and understand that we’re not really that different from a computer or a machine ourself.

How is this possible?

Well, to understand that we need to first understand the fact that the DNA is very akin to a computer program. Starting at a basic level, computer programmes derive their uniqueness, function and complex activity through the primary difference between binaries 0 and 1. And we can get complex computer programmes by using different compositions of codes made from different arrangements of the binaries 0 and 1 (it’s actually a lot more complicated than that – just ask a software engineer). Likewise, DNAs use a set of four different proteins called adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine (AGCT) and by using different arrangements of these proteins in sequence, we get DNA – or, to put it simply, what we know as ‘life’. This difference in arrangement can be construed as a sort of a unique language.

Now, coming to a GIF, we need to also understand that in a computer, a GIF isn’t so much a moving picture or graphic as it is a cluster of data so arranged that it constitutes a moving image. So for embedding or inserting a GIF into a bacteria’s DNA, all we need to do is re-interpret the data of a GIF, which is in computer code, into a DNA code and replace a strand of DNA in the bacteria with this strand of data.

This is what it looks like:

Wait, can we do that?

Sure. As in, we couldn’t earlier but thanks to CRISPR (that incredible tool that we told you about earlier), we can now. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (Talk about trying too hard for an acronym). And this legendary, Nobel Prize-worthy tool basically acts like a computer’s copy/paste function – allowing scientists to manipulate DNA in all sorts of ways. Using two specific proteins called cas1 and cas2, the scientists replaced a particular part of the E. Coli bacteria’s DNA with the coded information of a GIF and then successfully retrieved it. But here’s the best part – the living bacteria, oblivious of the manipulation, continued multiplying and transferring the GIF with each multiplication.

For the record, this isn’t the first time scientists have fooled around with it – they’ve earlier successfully inserted pictures into DNA. But this is first time we’ve been able to insert something as complex as a GIF.

What does it mean for science?

To say the least, it’s a great start. It would serve us well to remember that in the early part of the 20th century, computer programming too had a similarly humble start. And look where we are now. From embedding complex information to re-thinking the limitations of being human, the implications of this technology are limitless.